


Dragonflies

by ampkiss



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 13:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1430692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ampkiss/pseuds/ampkiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been three weeks, and no one’s quite sure yet if Rick and Daryl are trying to keep it a secret or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragonflies

**Author's Note:**

> A post-reunion drabble, written for a prompt during S4b in anticipation of the Rick/Daryl reunion, so it diverges from the canon but you can always pretend it's after they all get settled again somewhere in S5.
> 
> My prompt was from paradox-of-retaliation on Tumblr:
> 
> "After they’ve reunited, they refuse to leave each others’ side for anything. Others find this amusing. Some fluffy smooching pls? :3"

It’s been three weeks, and no one’s quite sure yet if Rick and Daryl are trying to keep it a secret or not.  
  
There’s no telling, nothing out loud on anybody’s part. No one asks; not even Carl the first night Daryl’s back, when he walks into their room and Daryl’s asleep on his dad’s cot with Rick unlacing his boots. Michonne doesn’t ask about it when she talks to Daryl about going hunting and Daryl says  _I’ll ask Rick_ instead of yes; and Glenn doesn’t when Rick shows up for his shift on watch with Daryl at his elbow, flipping through one of Carl’s comic books. Daryl doesn’t ask, either, or Rick; they just let themselves let it happen. The second night, Daryl sleeps on the floor, grumbles about Rick’s busted rib when Rick fights him on it; the fifth night, he’s got his head pillowed on blankets and Judith asleep on his chest. She takes turns sleeping on all of them, and through the blur of her hair after midnight sometime in week two, Carl watches Daryl touch his dad’s fingers where they’re hanging over the edge of the cot. One at a time, tracing tips, like gliding your hand overboard on a lake. Like dragonflies.  
  
That’s how all of this is; with rapid wingbeats and a buzz in their throats, they’re so close that the movement of one ripples in the other, leaves a glimmer in the water. They sit to eat not so their hips are touching, but so they aren’t, unless you breathe too deep or you shift to make room for someone else or you just laugh the right way and then there’s a touch. They walk just-out-of-sync, and the stray threads from Daryl’s torn jeans wisp with the breeze enough to bump Rick’s knees. Their hands skim over the surface of each other and flit away, graze fingertips like every fluttering touch is feeding, holding them over until the next time.  
  
No one says anything, but they all know- except Daryl and Rick, who maybe are keeping it a secret. Rick goes to take a piss and Daryl suddenly runs out of conversation, wanders off a second behind him, and Carol laughs into her wrist to hide it while Daryl waits outside the bathroom door. Carl thinks he’s the only one who’s seen them kiss- fleeting, thrumming, quick brushes of the lips while he dozes in and out of sleep- but he’s wrong. Beth is curled in the roots of a tree, writing in a journal Daryl brought back for her on his last scavange, when she hears them murmuring at the edge of the fence. She almost calls out, but thinks better of it; turns her head just a little and just enough to see them past the tree trunk. They’re the same height but Daryl carries himself lower, slouches, so Rick leans back against the fence and Daryl up into him and their lips touch for only a breath before they fly away.  
  
Someone ought to say something, is the first thing Maggie says, which is the first thing anyone says; and it’s after Rick and Daryl went to check the perimeter for the night, and just past the edge of the light everyone sees their fingers slip together, then apart. She pokes at the fire, smiles across it at Glenn, and everyone’s cheeks are warm and lips hurt from curling up and keeping it in. She says  _so then they could let it out_ , and Michonne is the one who laughs and says  _they don’t even know it’s there_.  
  
Their love is a warm drone in the silence of their room at night. Carl lays in his bed with Judith next to him, his arms looped around her and summer whispering to an end as it plays with their hair through an open window. There’s the murmur of it- of Rick’s voice on Daryl’s name- and the motion, their hands drifting, quivering. Their fingers alight on each other’s wrists and cheeks with so little weight you’d think it would take nothing more than that breeze to carry them away, but they all know better. Rick seals his palm over Daryl’s cheek, promises murmured in his mouth, and Daryl shakes as his hands glide over Rick’s back, rest there, settle.  
  
In three days, during breakfast Daryl tells him his eyes are damsel blue, where they all can see Rick take his man’s hand and keep it while he laughs.


End file.
